PRESS INFORMATION
Book Launch, Tuesday 4 October, Wynnes Hotel,
Abbey St., Dublin 2 @ 6pm
Book to be launched by Éamon Ó Cuiv TD
The Hooded Men: British torture in Ireland August, October 1971 By Denis Faul and Raymond Murray
ISBN: 978-1-905569-99-1
220 pages, paperback
€15/£10
Following the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971, Fr Raymond Murray and Fr Denis Faul began a campaign to highlight the torture and ill treatment of many internees and to seek justice on their behalf. They were particularly concerned about those who were subject to sensory deprivation techniques and who became known as the Hooded Men. This campaign resulted in the publication of the same name, published in 1974. This unprecedented and truly groundbreaking composition was later to form the bedrock in the fight for truth, justice and accountability in the case of the Hooded Men.
This revised edition contains the original statements taken down by Raymond Murray, a trained historian, shortly after the men underwent the brutal interrogation methods known as the ‘Five Techniques.
In 1976 the European Commission found that the treatment of the Hooded Men constituted torture, but In 1978 the European Court reversed that decision, arguing that the techniques constituted inhuman and degrading treatment but not torture. By using what was later described as ‘an aggressive interpretation of torture’ (Ireland v. United Kingdom, 1978), the Court paved the way for further human rights abuses in Northern Ireland, and in other countries by other governments.
In 2014, through the work of many people across all corners of civic society, new evidence was discovered which fundamentally undermined the basis for the original finding. It indicated that the UK had deliberately misled the European Court. The Irish government accepted in court in December 2014 that they would apply to reopen the case of the Hooded Men. That case is now reaching a climax.
The original book, never before available in a trade edition, is now available with a new foreword, by the solicitor for the men themselves and a postscript on their lives and case to date by their case representative.
Monsignor Murray, a Catholic priest, is a well-known crusader for human rights in Northern Ireland and over the years he has produced with the late Monsignor Denis Faul, over 33 books and pamphlets on violations of human rights in Ireland. Raymond Murray also wrote the SAS in Ireland and Hard time—Armagh Gaol 1971–1986.
Available Now at all good bookshops or www.wordwellbooks.com
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